The Bad Sign

As stated in my "About me" section I have an adorable 1-year old puppy. He's a Sharpei-mixed mutt and his name is Snoop.

We adopted him February of this year, he was a Valentines Day gift to ourselves. I potty trained him, fitness trained him, taught him tricks, and I've been doing obedience training with him.

My sister-in-law taught his beginner obedience class, and right from the start we could tell he was one smart cookie. He loves to learn! The same rang true the whole way through his intermediate training class we've been taking here in Austin... But everything changed today, at his graduation, my emotions came out and it wasn't pretty.

It all started when we first arrived. We split up into teams and were having a relay with obedience tricks. Each dog/owner team was suppose to take their dog to their corner and get them to sit-lay down-sit then lay down and stay before returning back and tagging to the next dog. We practiced before it was time for the race, we had this in the bag. Our team was short one dog and we even volunteered to go twice to even the odds... Bad idea.

Snoop wouldn't even sit then lay down, he would sniff the food in the isle nearby, try to say hi to the dog on the other side of the store, play dead, ANYTHING but what I was telling him to do! I was getting frustrated, and he was getting frustrated at my frustration. I thought the second time around he'd get it right but no... Same story. We lost... big time. And I wanted to cry.

The teacher must have seen my frustrations because she looked at me, kind of laughed and said "It's ok, it's just a game." Luckily he won the second relay but the rest was downhill.

Not only did he take the longest time to listen to me before healing in front of the class... At the end of class, when they were each called up to get their diplomas, we each had to do a trick in front of everyone. Snoop knows TONS of tricks (he even did a really cute bow on Live TV last week) but tonight... Nothing. He was interested in everything except me and the treats in my hand. I was so embarrassed. If the last day was a final exam he would have FAILED.

Normally he's so good in public I don't know what it was... Maybe my anxiety? All of the distractions? The fact that he didn't have a walk that morning? I was so mad, and I was even more mad at the fact that I was mad.

On the way home I was telling my husband about my frustrations with Snoop and that's when it hit me... I'm going to be "that mom." You know... the one that's yelling at her kid from the bleachers: "WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOOT??!!!" "I TOLD YOU TO KEEP YOUR HANDS UP!!!" "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

Please no... Lord, don't let that be me.